There have been conventionally produced printed matters which were required relatively high image quality, such as a photographic picture or a poster, with a silver salt photography or a gravure printing method. However, it has become possible to produce such high quality images with an ink-jet printer or an electrophotographic image forming apparatus by the recent progress of digital technologies. Among digital technologies, progress of exposure technology was remarkable and it has become possible to form an exposing light having a very small dot diameter by employing a short wavelength semiconductor laser as an exposure light source by development of a blue light-emitting diode. By using various printers such as an ink-jet printer or an electrophotographic system which is provided with the aforesaid exposure device, production of a print having a high dot density of 1200 or 2400 dpi level (dpi representing a number of dots per inch (2.54 cm)) has become possible.
By the progress of the technology, there has been actively attempted recently to give high-class feeling such as texture feeling to a produced print so as to result in improving additional value to the print. For example, by adding the various processes called post processing to the produced print in the field of offset printing or screen printing, there have been produced printed maters with a high gloss finish of metallic tone or a restrained gloss finish of suede tone producing calm feeling.
Among various types of finish of prints, the needs for a matted finish or an anti-glare finish represented by the suede tone mentioned above are great. There is required a technique which can produce the matt finish print efficiently without performing the process which requires time and effort like the post-process treatment currently performed in the printing field. And it has been investigated the technique which forms the printed matter of a matted finish.
For example, in the field of electrophotography, the technique of designing a toner which is added a specific cross linkage resin or an elastomer to form an image accomplished a matted finish was examined (for example, refer to Patent documents 1 and 2). Moreover, an examination of an image forming apparatus with which an image accomplished a matted finish is acquired was also advanced by specifying the surface roughness of the side of the fixing roller which is in contact with the toner (for example, refer to Patent document 3).
Although a certain amount of matted finish effects was obtained for the print produced on an image forming support with low glossiness like a plain paper, it was found that the effects of matted finish might not no longer be acquired when image formation of a print was done on an image forming support with high glossiness like a coated printing paper. Moreover, although a matted property was exhibited in the image formation area where an ink or a toner was used to result in obtaining a certain amount of matted finish effects, the non-image formation might show the original glossiness of the image forming support, and there might produce a different finish giving a different texture feeling between the image formation area and the non-image formation area.
The inventors of the present invention tried to unify the texture feeling in the print image by performing coating the non-image formation area with colorless toner to form a toner layer in the whole image forming support in order to cancel the different texture feeling between the image formation area and the non-image formation area. Then, the inventors of the present invention prepared a clear toner containing no colorant with reference to the technique disclosed in Patent document 1 in which a toner image of a matted finish was obtained. And by applying the prepared clear toner to a non-image formation area so as to try to unify the texture feeling between the image formation area and the non-image formation area. However, it became easy to generate a gloss mottle in the non-image formation area by the effect of the wax contained in the clear toner, it was failed to unify the texture feeling between the image formation area and the non-image formation area.
Thus, in the prints produced using a image forming support with high glossiness such as a coated printing paper, it was difficult to unify the texture feeling between the image formation area formed with a toner or an ink, and the non-image formation area where a feeling of gloss of the image forming support was reflected by making the two areas to have the same level of anti-gloss finish. Therefore, when the print of an anti-gloss finish such as a suede tone is intended to produce, the post-process treatment process performed conventionally had to be performed, and it had become a problem to be solved when forming the print of an anti-gloss finish.
Patent document 1: Japanese Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. 2008-116948
Patent document 2: JP-A No. 2009-122171
Patent document 3: JP-A No. 2001-125411